Supression of Dersim rebellion revisited
In his new work, journalist Yalcin Dogan says Turkey brutally suppressed the1937-1939 Dersim rebellion, deliberately killed innocent Alevite Kurds, separated families and sent thousands of people into exile as part of a cruel assimilation campaign.
By Metin Demirsar
Istanbul (Dunya) – The 1937-1939 Dersim Rebellion, in today’s eastern province of Tunceli, and the way the Turkish government brutally suppressed it was one of the closest kept secrets in early Turkish republic history.
Only recently, as part of its democratization drive, has Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government opened up the state archives dealing with the rebellion to the public.
In his new book, ‘Savrulanlar: Dersim 1937-1938 Hatta 1939’ (The People Who Were Scattered About: Dersim 1937-1939), Yalcin Dogan, a prominent political writer with the daily newspaper Hurriyet, describes how the government deliberately burned down entire villages and killed thousands of innocent Alevite Kurds, as part of a pitiless assimilation campaign.
He writes that the rebellion was instigated by French and British agents seeking to undermine the young Turkish state.
He also says the state separated families and sent thousands of people into exile.
Mr. Dogan makes the allegations after examining all 1,389 state documents related to the Dersim campaign, many of which are published for the first time in his book. He says Turkey’s assimilation campaign resembles that of Australia’s treatment of the Aborigines. Kirmizi Kedi Yayinlari of Istanbul published the 287-page book.
The Black Archbishop
‘Kara Papaz Makarios’in Intikami’ (The Revenge of the Dark Bishop Makarios) is a work that claims that the late Archbishop Makarios (1913-1977), former leader of the Greek Cypriots and first and only president of a united Cyprus, was born in northwestern Turkey and not in Cyprus as is generally believed.
The author, Recep Cetin, also alleges that the Archbishop was the illegitimate son of Greek man and a Turkish Cypriot woman, which the author Recep Cetin says was the reason why Archbishop Makarios wanted to cover up his Anatolian past.
The book, published by Emre Yayinlari of Istanbul, says Archbishop Makarios was born the village of Karkavuz, near Egreli, Zonguldak, of a family of Anatolian Greeks who were forced to migrate to Greece during the 1923 population exchanges.
He also says Makarios studied at the famous Orthodox Church Seminary in Istanbul’s Heybeliada, and not in a Cypriot monastery.
In the 360-page study of the Greeks of Zonguldak, Mr. Cetin, a school teacher and writer, says the expulsion of Makarios’ family led to the Archbishop’s hatred of Turks.
The book is based on much innuendo and flimsy facts, but his descriptions of the lives of the Greeks of the Zonguldak area are well documented.
Tripoli of the West
Tahrici Kitabevi of Istanbul has produced a new major book on the history and economy of Libya, ‘Trablusgarp: Hedefteki Ulke Libya’nın Tarihi’ (Tripoli of the West: The History of the Target Country Libya.)
The brothers Mahmud Nuri, an Ottoman army officer, and Mahmud Naci, a member of the Ottoman assembly, wrote the book in the Ottoman script in the early 20th century, but it wasn’t published until translated into Arabic in 1970.
In 1973, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, a Turco-Egyptian historian who is now Secretary General of the Islamic Conference, translated it one more time into Arabic and published it in Libya.
Now it has been translated into modern Turkish.
Trablusgarp covers the history of Libya, a huge desert country twice the size of France, from ancient times through the last years of Ottoman rule in the early 20th century. During Ottoman times Libya was known as Tripoli of the West, to distinguish it from Damascus (Trablussam or Tripoli of the East).
The 219-page book is composed of four sections. The first deals with its geography and economy; the second covers its administrative divisions; the third contains its history, and the fourth deals with its hinterland and border disputes.